


starting with your heart, bright heart

by SyntheticRevenge



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Character Study, Hamid is so determined and he tries so hard and I love him so much, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28753299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyntheticRevenge/pseuds/SyntheticRevenge
Summary: He’s more than capable of making something of himself. This is a reinvention. An awful, petulant, self-centered phoenix violently burning itself up and emerging again.(Hamid, before the life he was meant for began)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	starting with your heart, bright heart

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, if this isn't canon-compliant I'm sorry, I'm still only 95 episodes in, but I would kill and die for Hamid and all my feelings came pouring out. Title's from A Beginning Song by the Decemberists, which is a great song for him. Hope you enjoy!

_ Don’t return until you’ve made something of yourself _ .

The words rest heavy on Hamid’s shoulders as he tries to convince himself he’s packing, sat paralyzed on the floor of his dorm for the last time. It’s not as if he’s been to Cairo in years, but now that it’s closed to him, he misses it like a limb. It’s probably just because it’s home, and he  _ needs _ home right now, needs someone to hold him and kiss his head and feed him an endless string of platitudes he doesn’t deserve.

His father will lie to his siblings, he knows that, and while part of him is grateful for that, he almost wants them to know. He wants to know whether they’ll love him anyway. He hopes they wouldn’t. He doesn’t deserve understanding, even if it  _ wasn’t his fault _ . His parents didn’t listen when he told them that, over and over, hysterical, until he hyperventilated and his throat closed up.  _ I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t my fault _ .

His father waited for him to choke himself into silence on his own pleading words, and said, simply,  _ You’re making a scene, Hamid _ .  _ Pull yourself together _ .

Hamid hasn’t slept since the explosion, not properly, every time he closes his eyes he gets jolted back out by some ambient sound his mind twists into screaming or his father’s cold voice. Now that his parents are gone and the school’s been bribed and he’s free to go, he’s not beholden to anyone or anything anymore. He doesn’t have to try and stay sane so as not to embarrass himself, he can let go.

Saleh was the first person to get him drunk, out back in the garden at the celebration after Aziza’s first proper show. Hamid hadn’t liked it much. He always preferred having control of himself, always feeling his father’s eyes on him, but now his father can’t even look at him, so what’s it matter?

He packs nothing. Leaves everything in his dorm. It’ll only remind him of the version of himself he had to kill to be able to keep living. He finds a cheap bar just off campus and drinks until he can’t get the right words off his tongue anymore. He’ll make himself a better person another night, for now he just wants to sleep.

He wakes up on a train to London, still drunk, thoroughly disheveled. He can barely remember how to prestidigitate himself neat again through the thick fog he’s stuck in, but he does. He has to. If he can’t maintain a facade of orderliness and poise, he should just leave the al-Tahan name behind and find a new one.

His apartment is objectively lovely. He wishes he weren’t too weak to serve his penance by living in shitty conditions, but he is. He hates himself for it  _ so _ much, that he’s getting drunk again to stave off the hangover in a  _ painfully _ comfortable bed while the families of the people he killed mourn and suffer because of him.

He loses four days, wakes up disoriented in a casino, and decides not to drink anymore. He can be better than Saleh, if nothing else. He’ll never hold a candle to Saira and Aziza, but--he shouldn’t be comparing himself. He’s a disgrace to the name. He’s a murderer.

Anger flares if he does any more than think around the edges of how events occurred, white-hot and venomous rage at Gideon. If he didn’t know how bad being responsible for a death felt, he’d say he wanted to kill Gideon for what he destroyed.

But still, Hamid was the one who lit the fuse. That’s his to bear. 

He writes letters. To the families of the students he killed, and the Dean as well. He gives them a return address, explains the situation, because they deserve the truth, and tells them they are more than welcome to take any revenge they want on him. He expects someone to take him up on it. Doubts he’ll survive the month.

No one comes, and it’s almost worse, just having to live with it, sober and aching. 

If no one’s going to kill him, then he has to work out what continued survival looks like. He’s not sure, not yet, but he knows it involves him intentionally doing good. He’ll spend his life trying to fix this, and he’s going to do all the good deeds the people he killed would’ve in their lifetimes, to try and make the imbalance up to the world at large. It’s all he can do for their memories, just as his father’s money was all he could offer to the people who survived them.

He’s more than capable of making something of himself. This is a reinvention. An awful, petulant, self-centered phoenix violently burning itself up and emerging again. Aziza used to face every challenge by saying  _ if it’s possible, I can do it _ , and Hamid thinks on that more and more these days. 

Nothing that’s worth doing is easy. He’s capable of starting again, and he’s going to.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! All feedback is greatly appreciated <3  
> Find me on tumblr @witnesstotheend


End file.
